


The Sweetest of Words

by derryday



Category: The Wolf Among Us
Genre: Episode 4: In Sheep's Clothing, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Injuries, Missing Scene, Pre-Relationship, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 12:41:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4305492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/derryday/pseuds/derryday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"Sit."</em>
</p><p>Bigby glanced at her over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised in weary surprise. Too late, it occurred to Snow that she'd just made a dog joke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sweetest of Words

**Author's Note:**

  * For [melonbutterfly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melonbutterfly/gifts).



> Lately I've wanted to extend the reaches of my comfort zone as a writer, so I'm trying out that whole accepting-prompts thing on Tumblr for the first time. I started with [this meme](http://derryday.tumblr.com/post/123366601977/send-me-a-pairing-and-a-number-and-ill-write-you) and promptly (ha) got a response from [melonbutterfly](http://archiveofourown.org/users/melonbutterfly/pseuds/melonbutterfly), who asked for Snowby, 7. _"I almost lost you."_ There are several other prompts waiting in my inbox and I am sooo pumped about them (and a bit nervous, but I really want to get into the habit of writing short-ish stuff). :D
> 
> Anyway, I haven't read the Fables comics (yet?), so please consider this somewhat AU, as this fic is based only on the game. The title is from Florence + the Machine's _Hardest of Hearts_. I hope you enjoy!

_"Sit."_

The single word came out icy and final, an unforgiving command. Snow winced. A small stab of remorse worked itself through her determination. 

She had been chewing on the word all night. She'd held on to it as they'd stood in the elevator in stilted silence, and now it had come out with much more momentum than she'd intended.

Bigby glanced at her over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised in weary surprise. Too late, it occurred to Snow that she'd just made a dog joke.

With the way their night had been going, she figured that the best course of action was to just move on. Minutes later, her living room was bathed in electric light. Heavy blue curtains blocked out the night. Her shoes stood neatly lined up by the door, and her blood-spattered blazer sat crumpled at the bottom of the laundry basket.

From the kitchen, Snow could see only the top of Bigby's head above the back of her couch, an out-of-place splotch in the muted, cool colors of her living room. But he was sitting down, and that was enough.

She dropped her head forward until her forehead rested against the wooden cabinets and released a shuddery breath. The kettle would take a moment to boil yet. She had time.

Snow was no witch. But she did have a very basic knowledge of herbs, and a small stash of dark-tinted jars in her cupboard. They clinked together as she rifled through them, a few falling over and rolling to the back of the cabinet under her shaking, searching fingers.

As soon as the tea steeped, the familiar smell of the tea calmed her nerves a bit. Her breathing came easier. It no longer squeezed through her throat as though through a straw. The tremor in her hands was worse now, but it mattered less. The tea was almost ready. All that was left to do was wait.

When she walked into the living room, Bigby had his eyes closed, his head dropped back to rest against the back of the couch. He started slightly when she set down the two mugs, and blinked into the lamp light. Snow realized he'd fallen asleep.

She could've kicked herself. It would have been better to let him sleep, give his body some time to work on knitting together his wounds. Perhaps she should've offered him a blanket, invited him to take a proper nap.

But instead of air, words got stuck in her throat now. She hadn't said anything to him since she'd commanded him to sit down. The silence felt too smothering to break now, so she just pasted on a smile and pushed one of the mugs towards him.

Propriety dictated that she should've sat in her armchair, with the table between them. But her feet, bare on her carpet, seemed to move of their own volition. Before she could catch up with herself, she had moved to sit beside him on the couch.

Snow's heart thumped unevenly. If only her damned hands would stop their trembling. She fastened them around her own mug to still them. The ceramic scalded her palms.

Bigby didn't seem to notice her sudden closeness, or the nervous energy that skittered through her. He scrutinized his mug. After a moment, he seemed to decide his boss wasn't likely going to drug him. 

He took a sip, then reared back a little in surprise. "What's this?"

Snow stared at him in horror. Had she measured the ingredients so sloppily? In her haste to check, she burned her tongue and swallowed a piping hot mouthful of tea with a grimace. But it tasted as it always did. The burdock root was a bit sweet, the refreshing sharpness of peppermint blocked out the other herbs.

"Purifying tea," she said. Her voice only shook a little.

That earned her a silent questioning look. It wasn't a very skeptic one, but Snow still felt blood rush to her face. "The silver poisoned you, right? So I thought…"

"Oh," Bigby said, a bit baffled. Perhaps it had never occurred to him that he could help the healing process along and did not just have to endure as his body fixed itself.

He sipped again. Snow watched him, but there was no frown of distaste, nor sudden choking. She let out a slow breath. She would not ask him if he liked it, she would not, she wouldn't give away the anxious writhing of her nerves.

Down in the street, some nightly traffic rushed past. The headlights reflected off the windows and painted blurry, wandering patches of light through the curtains. Snow sat, and drank her tea, and tried to ignore the pressure in her chest and focus on the task ahead.

She'd gotten Bigby into her apartment. That had been the first step. Now, she had to convince him to sleep.

It wouldn't be easy, she knew. She had to tread carefully. If she implied too strongly that he wasn't fit to work, he would storm out of her apartment right then, just to prove to her that he was. Trying to rouse his withered sense of self-preservation was not going to cut it. She had to find the right words, in exactly the right order, delivered in a carefully measured tone of voice.

Dr. Swineheart's warnings still echoed in her ears. Bigby might've been alert and walking, but that didn't mean he was fine. Silver shrapnel had been lodged in his body for far too long. He still needed rest.

And the surgeon had patched Bigby up. She'd been there for it. She'd gotten the chance to see that the white bandages weren't blooming red. The wounds must've started to knit shut. He was out of the woods. Bigby was right there, sitting more or less complacently on her couch, alive and breathing. 

But every time Snow closed her eyes, she could still see the way his body had jerked as the Tweedles' shotgun rounds thudded into him, how he'd folded over under the impact and slid down the wall. Blood had bloomed on his shirt, thick and dark in the low light.

Snow shivered in her blouse. It was a warm summer night, but the living room felt cool to her. This close, she could smell Bigby, the herbal sting of Dr. Swineheart's ointments, the lingering iron tang of blood. And her heart pounded and pounded away in her chest, as though it was still stuck in that alley behind the Pudding 'N Pie, in the warm sheeting summer rain.

Next to her, Bigby shifted his weight. Not a lot, and with only a small, suppressed wince, but Snow's head whipped around on its own accord and she stared at him, startled.

She looked him over. No growing spots of red on his shirt—he did look pale, but perhaps it was just the light—and the hands holding the mug didn't shake, but... Snow blurted, "Do you want an extra pillow?"

Bigby stared at her. It was the narrow-eyed alarm usually directed at shady Fables in back alleys. "No?" he said, warily, more a question than a statement.

Snow gave him a half-hearted glare, tried to ride the irritation out of the hollow, panicky feeling that was still lodged in her belly. As if it was so very outlandish that she was concerned about him—

Bigby winced again when he leaned forward and set the mug down. "Look," he said, slowly, still wrong-footed, "thanks for the tea, but I gotta go, I need to—"

"No." 

They looked at each other, both a little stunned by the sudden sharpness of the word. Snow's heart still thumped erratically, pumping anxious discomfort through her, and she suddenly wondered vaguely if Bigby could hear it.

Snow hesitated. She cleared her throat, smoothed her shaking hands over her skirt. Calm, she had to be calm. Reasonable. "I mean— it's night. Won't you rest first?"

"No time," Bigby said, with some of his usual gruffness. He shifted forward as if to rise, and went a little paler as the movement pulled on his wounds. "Maybe if I hurry I can catch up with Bloody Mary."

A sick jolt went through Snow's stomach. That pretty, impassive face, the breathless calm in her eyes, like gunpowder waiting to be ignited. The scrape of the Woodsman's axe against the brick wall...

"This isn't over," Bigby was saying. He was frowning at the table. He hadn't noticed Snow's wince. "The Crooked Man's people are still out there."

At last Snow found her words, choked them up through the tightness in her throat. "And they'll still be there tomorrow," she said, waveringly. "Whereas _you_ might not be, if you overexert yourself."

Bigby smiled, of all things. He probably meant it to be reassuring. But all Snow saw was a grim determination to do what was necessary, no matter the cost. "Don't worry about me. I'm alright."

For a moment, Snow closed her eyes. She should've put valerian into the tea. But there was the pesky problem of Bigby's bulk and height—she wouldn't have been able to arrange him on the couch to avoid aggravating his injuries.

"Because you are _resting_ ," she said. It felt good to glare, or at least better than floundering for words and losing her grip on the brittle sensation in her chest. "As you should be, as Dr. Swineheart said—"

"Snow," Bigby said slowly, picking his way through the minefield. He ducked his head a little to catch and hold her eyes with his own. "I don't know what Swineheart said while I was unconscious, but I'm okay. Really."

"Don't _patronize_ me," Snow retorted, and when had she begun to raise her voice? "I saw the wounds, alright? You can't just sit there and tell me you're fit to go right back to work, after— after you've had your blood all over me!"

Irritation flickered in Bigby's gaze, there and gone in an instant, a distant spark. The shadows around his eyes looked bruised. Snow noticed blurrily that he still had a bit of gravel stuck to the ends of his hair from the alley.

Belligerently, he began, "I can't just _sleep_ —"

Snow pushed her mug away. A bit of tea slopped over the rim and trickled across the wooden table. "Bigby, it was not a suggestion!"

Silence fell, sharp and ringing. Bigby didn't exactly flinch away, but the stubborn set of his jaw dissolved into surprise. He was just... He was sitting there on her couch and insisting he was going back to hunting down their adversaries only an hour after his blood had soaked the front of her blazer, and Snow just wished he would listen to her _this once._

"Do you have any idea what it was like?" she asked. Her voice cracked wetly."Standing there in that alley and, and watching you—"

Something flashed in Bigby's eyes. Hurt, perhaps, or something less sharp, a resigned kind of anger. "We've been over this," he interrupted. "I've said I'll try, what more do you—"

"—watching you _get shot!"_ Snow snapped—no, very nearly shouted, to talk over him. Bigby blinked. "I couldn't do anything, I couldn't even get you out of the rain!"

There was a hot, hard lump in her throat. It hurt to breathe around it, and the breakable, panicked feeling in her chest was swelling like a balloon fit to burst. She knew she was making an absolute fool of herself. Her face felt outright numb from the heat that had rushed to her cheeks.

But she couldn't stop. The words just tore themselves free, like some wreckage unearthed from a sandy river bed. "And when you shifted back you weren't breathing," she shouted, "and I— I almost _lost_ you!"

At last, her voice broke completely. Her eyes welled up with tears.

Bigby stared at her. He looked horrified. He opened his mouth, then closed it, at an utter loss for words.

Snow lurched forward on the couch. Her throat burned with humiliation. Already she was choking on each breath she gasped in. Enough, she thought, desperately, she could take no more—she would just flee to the kitchen and hope he didn't follow. 

"I'll just—," she choked, and reached for Bigby's discarded mug, her own hand warping and smudging in her blurred vision.

A hand closed around her shoulder. Not hard, beyond that initial clasp—Bigby loosened his hold immediately. But his palm was warm and solid, strangely intimate through the thin fabric of her blouse. 

Snow raised a trembling hand to hide her face. Stop it, she thought, furious with herself for the two hot tears that ran down her cheeks, just _stop_ it.

"Snow," Bigby said, a little helplessly. "Snow, hey—"

The touch on her shoulder shifted into the barest coaxing pull. She had already jerked forward to get up, had shifted her weight onto the balls of her feet. But somehow she found herself turning instead.

Then her forehead was resting on Bigby's shoulder. His shirt was wrinkled. The bandages felt solid and sturdy through the fabric. And Bigby still held her shoulder, gingerly, stiff and wary for just a moment until he wrapped both arms around her and gathered her close.

"Fuck," Bigby said, more to himself than to her. Snow sniffed, tried to laugh, but it came out more like a sob. He ran a big hand down her back—not far, but slowly. "Snow..."

In any other situation, his fumbling for words might've been funny. Now, though, Snow couldn't breathe through the painful tightness in her throat, and each wet gasp she let out sent a hot, ricocheting pain through her chest. 

Her ribs felt fit to burst, like they'd just crack under the sudden, careening panic that shot through her, a last remnant from the alley. Wrinkly fabric touched her palms. Belatedly, she realized that she'd fastened her cold fingers in the waist of Bigby's shirt. 

No sobs shook her, and somehow that was almost the worst. It was less humiliating to weep quietly. But perhaps that splintering feeling in her chest would've drained out faster if she'd been able to just cling to him and cry.

Bigby smelled like dried blood and ointment. But he was so solid and warm, holding her gently, like she was something fragile and precious. A tremor went through her. For a dangerous, teetering moment, she had to fight the urge to wind her arms around his middle and hold him back.

"Hey, it's alright," Bigby said, near her ear. His voice reverberated through both of them. "It's alright. I'm fine—"

Snow snorted, then coughed a little. She raised her head until she could rest her cheek against Bigby's shoulder. Her sinuses burned. The curtained window behind the couch was just a blueish blob in her vision. Tears trickled down her cheeks and shook her in slow shivers.

"I'm sorry about the alley," Bigby told her. He spoke quietly, as though divulging a secret. He still had one hand fitted around her shoulder. "I'm sorry you had to see that."

She shook her head, hard enough that she felt the pull of her bobby pins holding her bun together. She choked on a trembling breath, squeezed her eyes shut against the hot sting. It wasn't about that. It wasn't about the blood, the startlingly loud echo of the shots. 

The truth was, she could've done without seeing Bigby Wolf collapse against a dirty wall, smearing blood down the bricks. And yet...

And yet she was— glad, in a way, that she'd been there. If anyone had offered to trade places with her, Snow would've fought them tooth and nail. 

It made no sense. She'd been thoroughly useless. The only thing she'd done had been to yell at Nerissa to call Dr. Swineheart, and then she'd tangled her hands in short, wet fur as she'd struggled to pull his still form out of the rain.

If it had been the Woodsman or even Beast by Bigby's side, they could've helped. They would've jumped into the fray with him, and perhaps he wouldn't have gotten so badly injured. And still Snow could not help but be glad, in a fierce and selfish corner of her mind, that it had been her.

"Okay, okay, I take it back," Bigby said quickly, "sorry," and then quieter again, _"Fuck."_

Snow sniffed again, and smiled shakily for a moment, though Bigby couldn't see her. She all but heard him berate himself for his awkward blundering. She didn't want to move from where she'd tucked her face into his shoulder, well aware that she'd be snot-nosed and blotchy, but she wished that she'd had the breath to at least tell him that he didn't have to soothe her.

Bigby's warmth was enough. It soaked through her thin blouse, loosened the trembling stiffness of her spine. Goosebumps broke out all down her arms, and Snow sighed a little in relief when Bigby started to rub her back again. She could feel him breathe, felt his cheek brush her hair and his arms hold her close.

Under her cheek, Bigby's shoulder lifted in a slow sigh. "I'll rest," he said, "if that'll make you feel better. Okay?"

Though the words were stilted, they drew another sob-like noise from her, a half-smothered wet gasp of relief. She nodded. Almost on their own account, her eyes slipped shut. Snow breathed out. 

Later, she could not have said how long they sat there, or how long it took for her tears to subside. The minutes just ticked by, unmeasured by either of them. Cars drove past outside and cast their moving headlights into the room. Their leftover tea went cold on the table.

At last, Snow's cheeks felt sore and raw from crying. She leaned just a little more of her weight against Bigby. It was late. There were so many small things clamoring for her attention. She had to put away the tea, for one. She had to wash her face soon, or the salt would irritate her sensitive skin. But despite the awkward twist in her hips and the congested feeling in her nose, she felt like she could've sat there for hours.

Bigby didn't move away either. One hand was resting again between her shoulder blades, his thumb drawing faint, gentle circles, in an absent-minded kind of way, like he'd forgotten he was doing it. His breath moved them both, slow and deep. 

Her hair brushed against his cheek. Then Bigby went almost limp against her and tilted to the side. 

Heart thumping suddenly, Snow jerked away from him. But he was already regaining his balance, blinking at her, and she realized he had only nodded off to sleep for a second, not dropped unconscious.

He cleared his throat. "Sorry," he said.

Snow realized she had gripped his shoulders to keep him from toppling off the couch. Without his solid warmth against her front, she felt cold again. And for a moment, she almost found herself tipping forward, ducking back into his arms.

Slowly, she let him go, refusing to allow her hands to spring from his shoulders like he'd burned her. "Well, you certainly need rest," she said.

Her voice was scratchy from weeping, and yet it came out brisker than she'd meant it to. "You can sleep here," she added, struggling to soften the words. "It's more comfortable than it looks."

The drained-out, shivery feeling in her chest wound a bit tighter. Bigby was just gazing at her, with a look Snow didn't think she'd ever quite seen, something unguarded and pliant and unbearably warm. 

Under that look, it was hard to pretend she hadn't just cried into his shirt like some forlorn damsel, but... it was also hard to feel truly mortified. No one except Bigby had witnessed her episode, and somehow, that made it— not alright, perhaps, but acceptable.

The silence stretched. Bigby gave her a lopsided smile, and Snow was relieved to see it came easily. 

He let go of her shoulder—she hadn't even noticed his careful hold anymore, only felt a bit cooler for the removal of his warmth. "I think I'll take that pillow now," he said. 

Snow nodded quickly. She couldn't quite find her voice, but it didn't seem to matter very much. It wasn't all that hard to meet his gaze anymore, though she knew her make-up had to be all over her face, wet black smudges around her eyes.

At last she leaned away. "I'll get you a blanket," she said, her voice almost steady, and went to gather up their discarded mugs.


End file.
